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Posted August 27, 2017 10:14 pm

Aaron Blake: Trump is starting to tear the GOP apart

Aaron Blake is senior political reporter for The Fix, a politics blog at The Washington Post. (Submitted)

President Donald Trump is now openly attacking the GOP leaders of both the House and the Senate. In tweets Thursday morning, he blamed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for having “failed” to replace Obamacare, and he said both McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., created the current debt ceiling “mess” by using the wrong tactics.

The tweets lay bare tensions that both the White House and McConnell’s office have sought to play down in recent days, after an extensive New York Times piece detailed a strained relationship between the president and the GOP Senate leader, including Trump berating McConnell in a phone call two weeks ago. Although Trump has been known to attack pretty much anybody and this could just as soon blow over, the tweets suggest a looming showdown between Trump and his own party in Congress if it doesn’t deliver on his agenda to his satisfaction.

Congressional Republicans should be very worried. Trump could tear them apart — and he’s already starting to do so.

Despite Trump’s broad and unprecedented unpopularity early in his presidency, he retains a pretty strong hold on his base, with around 75 to 80 percent still approving of him. There are signs that his hold on that base is cracking, yes, but the vast majority of Republicans remain loyal and are following Trump’s lead.

What’s more, a growing body of polling evidence suggests real peril in Republicans being seen as failing or undermining Trump.

Case in point: A new George Washington University Battleground Poll released shortly before Trump’s tweets showed 59 percent of Republicans say their member of Congress has not been “supportive enough” of the president. Another 29 percent say their support has been “about right,” and just 4 percent — 1 in 25 Republicans — say their member has been “too supportive.”

In that way, Trump is already tilling fertile soil by attacking the likes of McConnell, Ryan and Sens. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Dean Heller, R-Nev. A strong majority of the GOP base thinks their party hasn’t done enough to help Trump, and now Trump is blasting that message.

That holds true for specific senators as well as the party. The limited polling we have on individual members suggest those who have tangled with Trump have paid a steep price in their personal image ratings.

A poll from Democratic-leaning automated pollster Public Policy Polling this month showed a grim state of affairs for Heller, who initially opposed the GOP health-care bill and drew Trump’s ire before eventually supporting a later version. The PPP poll showed him with a brutal 22 percent approval rating in Nevada, compared to 55 percent who disapproved.

Ditto the other vulnerable Republican senator up for re-election in 2018, Flake, who has been a more vocal Trump critic than Heller.

We have very limited polling here, and it’s all from one, partisan-leaning pollster. But if those numbers are even close to reality, it suggests Republicans are at significant risk of alienating the base if they don’t fall in line behind Trump and/or succeed for him.